Jersey becoming the state of reality TV

In the opening scene of the new reality show “Jerseylicious,” Olivia Blois-Sharpe races to a job interview after a sleepless night of clubbing, her white Hummer swerving treacherously as she throws her head forward and douses it with hairspray.

“I can’t figure it out — I don’t know why I’m so late all the time,” says the Montville makeup artist, 22, still clad in a sequined leopard-print outfit from the night before. “Thank God I have a personal closet on wheels.”

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerGayle Giacomo, owner of Gatsby Salon in Green Brook, stars in a new reality TV show called “Jerseylicious.”
Over the next hour, the over-bronzed brunette hits the local diner for disco fries, undresses in a parking lot and somehow aces her interview at a Green Brook hair salon where — surprise! — she’ll work alongside the cutthroat blonde who stole her boyfriend.

"Jerseylicious,” which premieres tonight on the Style Network, is just the latest in a string of network shows that have transformed the Garden State into a reality-TV mecca. Whether it’s Bravo’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” MTV’s “Jersey Shore” or TLC’s “Cake Boss” and “Table for 12,” every network seems to want its own stereotypical cast of mouthy, cocky, proud-to-be-from-Jersey personalities.

Practically all the major reality TV series have filmed here,” said Steven Gorelick, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission. “We’ve been told New Jersey is the reality capital because people here are very real — or unreal.”

Producers apparently feel that quality has more than enough mass appeal. While overall film and television production in the state fell 14 percent between 2007 and 2008, reality TV projects jumped more than 50 percent, to 54 shows, according to the commission.

In recent years, reality shows have probably recruited more cast members from New Jersey than any other area in the country, except possibly Los Angeles, said Robert Galinsky, who teaches aspiring performers at the New York Reality TV School.

An inside peek at the 'Jerseylicious' salon

An inside peek at the 'Jerseylicious' salon"Jerseylicious," which premieres March 21 on the Style Network, is just the latest in a string of major network shows that have transformed the Garden State into a reality-TV mecca. We go behind the scenes at the Gatsby Salon in Green Brook, the setting for the series. The stars of the show, owner Gayle Giacomo and her daughter, Christy Pereira, talk about just how much of the show is "real." (Video by Leslie Kwoh/The Star-Ledger)

Producers play up the image that New Jersey is populated by “boneheads” because viewers are conditioned to believe it. Meanwhile, residents eager to overcome the state’s “bridge-and-tunnel reputation” sometimes play right into it.

“Everyone understands what kind of personality works now on reality TV, and people from New Jersey are often misinterpreted as not as — what’s the word — ‘sophisticated,’ ” Galinsky said.

Still, some New Jerseyans do seem to possess a unique sense of confidence, he said.

Take “Cake Boss” star Buddy Valastro, for instance. In a recent interview, the 33-year-old Hoboken bakery owner made no apologies for the know-it-all persona he exudes on the TLC reality series, which is filming its third season.

Courtesy of TLCBuddy Valastro is the star of TLC's hit show "Cake Boss."
“They love my taste, they love the show, they love the family,” he said, referring to what fans say in the 50 to 100 letters he gets each day. “I’m really gifted at what I do. I’m an amazing cake artist, decorator, baker. And I’m not just saying that to sound conceited — I’m a dying breed.”
THANK A SOPRANO
The networks didn’t always recognize New Jersey’s star potential. For years, the state hosted only sporadic tapings for blockbuster shows such as “Wife Swap,” “The Apprentice,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “The Simple Life” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Gorelick said. But that number grew as producers from “Queer Eye,” for instance — the first reality show to film in the state — kept returning for more episodes because "they liked making over the typical Jersey guy."

Then, in 2008 and 2009, two networks struck it big with “The Real Housewives” and “Jersey Shore” — and the rest of the TV industry has since rushed to follow suit. Oxygen recently announced it is developing a show called “Jersey Couture,” which will take place in a family-run dress shop in Freehold that specializes in “over-the-top dresses.”

This sudden fascination with New Jersey comes as no surprise to TV historian Robert Thompson, who traces it back to the hit HBO series “The Sopranos.”

He points to several converging factors. First, New Jersey is located next to New York City, where many TV studios are located. Production crews have easy access to a diverse landscape filled not with made-for-TV “Sex and the City” types but “regular guys,” he said.

Second, the public’s understanding of the Garden State has remained shallow, much to the advantage of the burgeoning cable industry. Many people still perceive New Jerseyans as people with funny accents who spend their days zipping along an oddity called a Turnpike while secretly wishing they were New Yorkers, he said.

“Think of all the people who land in Newark and take the cab into Manhattan. That’s what they experience,” said Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Pop Culture. “It’s always been the town next to the big city.”

The end result, he said, is that in a decade’s time, “we’ve gone from ‘The Sopranos’ to ‘Jersey Shore,’ from the sublime to the absurd, from one of the greatest TV shows ever made to one of the not-greatest TV shows ever made.”

A BIG IMPACT

Experts warn the trend is self-perpetuating.

At his New York talent networking company, VIP Talent Connect, CEO Michael James said he’s noticed a surge in New Jersey reality star hopefuls at his events who appear to be imitating what they see on TV. The men arrive with open shirts, shaved chests and gelled hair. The women wear skintight outfits, stilettos, long nails and loud jewelry.

“You’re starting to see reality mimic ‘reality,’ ” he said. “What people don’t realize is most of these kids will have a hard time getting a job in the industry after. Just as fast as those fans put you up on that pedestal, they’ll take you off of it.”

Already, there are signs that New Jersey’s 15 minutes of fame are almost up, he said. He pointed to a recent pitch for a reality show called “Brighton Beach,” about a group of young, vodka-chugging Russians in Brooklyn.

“We’ll move on to the next big thing,” he said.

But in the meantime, the shows are bringing the state a lot of fame and money. The film commission’s Gorelick estimates that in just one month of filming, “Jersey Shore” spent close to $2 million on local goods and services like food, hotels and off-duty police.

That’s less than the $40 to $50 million a year from big-budget TV series that film regularly in the state, like “Mercy” or “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” but comparable to what many low-budget feature films spend, he said.

And while the state now faces the possible departure of movies and other TV series following Gov. Chris Christie’s budget proposal last week to freeze the state’s film tax credit program, Gorelick said reality shows will most likely stay because they rarely applied for the incentive.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

“Jerseylicious,” shot last fall at the Gatsby Salon in Green Brook, ostensibly centers around owner Gayle Giacomo’s efforts to jump-start the family business more than a decade after her husband’s death.

After investing nearly $2 million in renovations, Giacomo, 52, and her daughter, Christy Pereira, 30, the salon’s manager, set out to hire five new employees.

That’s when the show’s more boisterous stars arrive: Anthony Lombardi, the show’s only male, portrayed as a family man and mediator; Gianelle “Gigi” Liscio, the naïve young stylist who wants nothing more than to marry her bad-boy sweetheart; Blois-Sharpe, the party girl who is perpetually apologizing for her tardiness; and Traci Dimarco, the two-faced vixen whose only discernible mission is to sabotage Blois-Sharpe.

Courtesy of the Style NetworkThe cast of the Style Network's new reality television series, "Jerseylicious."
Hairstyling falls by the wayside as the cameras capture the ensuing chaos of catfights, drunken parties and vapid soundbites from Blois-Sharpe, who at one point says: “I’d rather buy an outfit than buy gas in my car. It’s really a problem, ‘cause if you think about it, I can’t wear gas.”

Style Network executives don’t deny the show is fueled by hyperbole. Producers decided on New Jersey in part because of its notoriously loud fashion, said Sarah Weidman, senior vice president for development and new series.

“You think about ‘Jersey Shore’ — they’ve got big earrings, the big hair, the jewelry, the guys are all about the tans and waxes,” she said.

She added: “Part of why reality TV has been so successful is it’s voyeuristic. People want to see how others live, whether it’s mocking or aspiring to be like them.”

REALITY AND ‘REALITY’

So just how much of “Jerseylicious” is “real”?

On a recent weekday visit to the Gatsby Salon, the five new employees featured on the show were all absent. Instead, Giacomo and her daughter, Pereira, calmly supervised a dozen of their regular hires — many of whom the cameras never captured during the hundreds of hours of taping — as they snipped, colored and washed.

“What would be exciting about coming in and seeing color on their heads?” said Giaocomo, gesturing to her clients. “We have craziness, but not like that.”

Much of the filming was done at night, they explained, and they actually have a staff of 40, not five, as the show would have viewers believe. When Giacomo and her daughter auditioned for the show last fall, their main goal was to score free publicity for their salon. They said they rejoiced when they got the part, but resolved to keep their private lives out of the limelight.

Which is probably why producers decided to spice up the show with characters like Blois-Sharpe, who said the network first contacted her more than a year ago after spotting her MySpace profile, which showed photos of her wearing “little corsets, sparkly crystal bras and big poofs of hair.” They followed up last year by asking her to appear on “Jerseylicious,” she said.

The petite brunette, who claims she is often mistaken for “Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, said she can’t help it if she tans up to five times a week, dates a “big, tan, jacked” personal trainer and refuses to wear any outfit more than once.

“I’ve literally been like that for so long,” she said. “Honestly, it’s not like we play stereotypes. That’s just how we are.”